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Bad Science columnist attracts a lawsuit threat

Ben Goldacre, who pens the Bad Science column of a UK newspaper, took on an …

Ben Goldacre's writing might be well known to some of you. As the author of the popular Bad Science column in the Guardian, Goldacre regularly takes on the pseudoskeptics, cranks, denialists, and the rest of the anti-science brigade. One of his more high-profile bugbears has been the anti-vaccine movement, and that fight has landed him in legal trouble.

At issue is a post that appeared on Goldacre's site earlier in the week, which featured an audio capture of a phone-in show on a London radio station. Thanks to the radio station's lawyers, the clip has been taken down, although the magic of Google's cache means it's right here for your enjoyment. In the clip, Jeni Barnett, a radio host who will be familiar to fellow Londoners, took on vaccination programs, and managed to spin just about every line possible from the pseudoskeptic handbook over the course of the programme.

The ranting against the concept of herd immunity is breathtaking, as is the sheer ignorance on display from both the host and a number of her guests. There are some pure gems from the host and her callers, such as suggestions that vaccines put kids at risk of cancer and the revelation that "children get childhood diseases for a reason." The caller responsible for that particular gem is apparently a homeopath, which is striking, given that its practitioners often use vaccines to justify its contention that "like cures like."

Clearly, there is a degree of public interest in comment on some of the misinformation, which would seem to fall within the UK's fair use provisions. But the length of the excerpt might have run afoul of the "no more than is necessary is included," limits of fair use. Ben Goldacre apparently thought that the show in its entirety was necessary to convey the horror.

Google's cache isn't the only place you can catch the audio anymore. Goldacre has quite an Internet following, and they've apparently decided to fight the takedown by placing the audio on YouTube as well as a number of blogs.

It's hard to determine exactly what the radio station hopes to accomplish by suing in a case where reasonable claims can be made regarding fair use. Because he's widely read, Goldacre was providing the station and this show with a global spotlight, which had to have been appealing from the "no publicity is bad publicity" perspective.

Of course, the publicity involved highlighting the station's broadcast of irresponsible nonsense on a public health issue, so one suspects that there may be a degree of embarrassment involved, either on the part of the station or the show's host. It's also beginning to seem that the antivaccine movement is intrinsically aligned with the legal system. Andrew Wakefield's erroneous (and perhaps fraudulent) claims about the MMR vaccine stemmed from a class action suit looking to buy some science, and a US blogger was ensnared in another vaccine lawsuit for daring to write about the topic.

In some ways, the lawsuit may wind up being a public good. LBC's legal attempt to stop more people hearing the broadcast has almost certainly failed, now that Goldacre's cause has been taking up by the Internet community. If it results in a greater public awareness that the antivaccination movement belongs in Bad Science, that will have been a good thing.

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